Kominicki: In the move to a paid model, something doesn’t click

After months of anguish, nail biting and thoughtful brandy sipping, we’ve decided to start locking down the libn.com Web site.

Beginning after Labor Day, you’ll need to enter your seven-digit subscriber code to access many of the site’s features, including the content of the weekly newspaper, our decade or so of archives and the best posts to our most popular blogs. We’re also adding a few features, including a nifty digital version of the paper that will be a plus for traveling fans of the dead-tree edition.

Nonsubscribers will still have access to breaking business news, but they’ll have to pony up $109 a year for the rest. That comes with a print edition, of course, which true e-heads may donate to our high school business program.

We’ve been pretty excited about the performance of our Web site over the past year. We’ve built a dedicated audience of more than 60,000 readers, a big number for a newspaper that barely ever topped 12,000 in weekly circulation.

But giving away the news hasn’t turned out to be much of a business model. Many advertisers are still reluctant to run online, and those that do are not willing to pay anything near the prices we command in print. Worse, our renewal and new-subscriber numbers are slipping as readers realize they can get much of what we offer for free online.

Even more troubling: Members of the staff are asking for pay raises.

If all goes to plan, some of the 60,000 will convert to paid subscriptions, and the rest will keep coming back to read free headline news and, we hope, visit our advertisers. If you’re already a paid subscriber, we encourage you to find your seven-digit code, which is printed each week on your mailing label, and have it handy. If you’re not a subscriber, well, why not avoid the rush?

The decision to lock down the site has not been popular with some members of the staff, primarily the journalists, who believe they have an inalienable right to be read by as many people as possible. I started out as a reporter and understand: In our business, ego must often fill in for decent wages. Now, as publisher, I have to argue that we must focus on people willing to pay for what we write, even if that number proves to be smaller.

Which brings us, finally, to the most important question in all of this, which is whether my column should be locked down online, or left open, an unfettered come-on to keep some of the 60,000 coming back. I, of course, voted for lock down. The editors disagree.

To get a better feel for the pulse of the Web-focused business community, I put together an online survey and encouraged my 475 Facebook friends to take part. As of this writing, I had an 8 percent response rate, which I’m told is scientifically valid in several states.

About 60 percent of respondents are from Suffolk County, suggesting that I either have more friends east of Plainview or that Suffolk residents are more computer literate, your choice. Most said they were of the “Brady Bunch” generation, followed closely by the group from “Ozzie and Harriet.”

Forty percent of the survey takers are current paid subscribers and another 18 percent said they regularly read someone else’s printed copy. A troubling 37 percent, however, clicked the box labeled, “I’m an Internet freeloader and proud of it.”

Regarding the specific question about this column – locked down or not? – an astounding 82 percent told me to keep open access. And almost half of those clicked the box titled, “I think the Internet should be eternally free regardless of how many newspapers go under.”

I suppose it’s a waste of time to point out that as newspapers go under, so do columnists.

“Your column should be a perk for all,” one respondent wrote. Added another, “I think humor should be free to the masses.”

“I think columnists should be free, but that news content should be paid for by subscription,” another said. “Columnists can serve the same purpose as barkers once did for circuses. They create excitement and interest – hopefully enough to get people to pay to go inside the curtain and look for more interesting stuff.”
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, step right up, read my column, then come inside for a look at our two-headed regional government.

So there you have it. The people have spoken. We are going to lock down the site after Labor Day, because we simply have to start getting more money for our content. But my column shall remain open, available at no charge to the humor-loving masses yearning to laugh for free … and who apparently wouldn’t pay for it anyway.

My ego is bruised, but I shall find some way to muscle on. Maybe the survey respondent who added,

9 comments

Charging for the site won’t work. Particularly in this economy, very few people are going to add a 100 dollar a year bill for something they were accustomed to getting for free. The real solution is to get advertisers to want to be seen on a website. The effectiveness and the presentation of the ads must improve. I don’t see the average consumer ponying up more than six or seven dollars a year for any website access, no matter how good it is.

I understand the need to make a profit to run a business. That’s fundamental. However, the content we (the freeloaders, such as myself) are locked out of, while probably more important than we perceive, will have a relatively astronomical price tag: from $0 to $109. That’s too much to swallow when you think about all of the other free content that’s available to get news, etc. LIBN is one source of many that colors my perception of things. Without it, I’ll be missing something, but not enough to pony up $109. In fact, (and this is harsh), I wouldn’t be willing to pay $1 directly for it. The answer has got to be in finding a way to make it worthwhile to the advertisers so they can subsidize the freeloaders. The only other model that works for me is for specific, reputable content that I can’t get anywhere else, such as consumerreports.org. (Yes, I have a paid membership there.) In that case, I justify the annual $27 price because anytime I purchase anything of significant cost (i.e. a couple hundred dollars or more) or when I want to make sure I get the right thing (even if it’s a small price, but an important item for some task), I go to consumerreports.org for what I believe is an unbiased (and yes imperfect) report on what the best choices are. I know it’s not 100% accurate, but it’s much better than what I can do on my own and a heck of a lot faster than doing research on my own, so I buy the service. I can’t say that about LIBN. (No offense to you guys, but you’re just not enough of a niche reporting service to make that claim.) So, after labor day, I’ll just read less from you. And if it turns out that the news flashes I get are just giving me headlines with no detail, I’ll either Google the story to get the details, or (if that doesn’t work), I’ll just kill the flashes since I won’t be able to use the information effectively. We’ll see how it goes. Good luck to LIBN. (I have a bad sinking feeling about this, though…)

Great Idea!!! Print more papers, cut down more trees, create more waste, produce more carbon emissions. THIS is supposed to be a GOOD idea in 2009?

I will continue to read the ONE copy my office shares. We read it, initial it and pass it on. Efficient, sustainable, economical. That’s still allowed, right? You haven’t come up with a plan to use florescent sensitive ink that disappears moments after it’s exposed to office lighting. Don’t bother anyway, because in the event that you do, we will huddle around and read in unison, or one of us might read it aloud, or in the dark with night vision goggles.
As you can see, I feel your news is important, and I would consider paying for it, just not that much. How about a web only price that doesn’t include the print version (say $29/year). Now that’s sustainable!
This new policy will only serve to stop me from reading the online ads. The only loser here is you and your advertisers.

hi john ! i must say, as a former long island resident and business owners of 30 years, as well as a content web site owner for 16 years…..this is a seriously bad idea. i do not have the space or time to list the multitude of things that are wrong with what you are about to do, and i certainly hope that things work out for you guys, but this is not the time in our economy to be doing something as radical as you are planning. i run poolandspa.com and we are primarily a content driven web site (we do ecommerce too, but most of our revenue is ad-driven). yes, in this economy we have had to slash our advertising prices, but surprisingly that has resulted in more advertisers on our site than ever before – not less. and as the economy slowly improves, we plan to slowly increase our rates back up to normal rate card prices. but in the meantime, we are helping out a lot of advertisers and also helping our web site visitors who do, in fact, appreciate and click on the ads. you should really re-think what you are about to do, because it costs an awful lot of money to re-gain a customer, or reader, or advertiser, once you lose them in mass. just my two-cents.

Hey John. We understand. It’s all about the revenue model. You’ve got to do what you need to do to keep publishing
in print. To make this work, you’ll have to make tough decisions on what’s available online for free and what requires a subscription. It’s not an easy call, as
witnessed by many print pubs that have not done well
with charging for online content. Good luck.
– David Pinkowitz (www.dcpmarketing.com)
.
P.S. — I am and will continue to be a subscriber.

I agree that you need a revenue model for your content but regressing to an old world media model is not the way to do this. I don’t want to be a print subscriber, even if you donate my print copy you’re still modeling it as a print subscription. I read online and find this format more valuable. In fact, you guys have been doing a great job building up content tailored to the blog/podcast format. Come up with a business model that matches your content and technology innovation, don’t pull an old model out of the trash heap and try to apply it. The price is not appropriate, there are plenty of bigger name news outlets online charging a lot less. Why should it be one size fits all? Let us have a reasonably priced subscription to the main content and charge extra for special reports and other exclusive content.

You need to rethink the way you handle ad sales for the online properties. I contacted your ad sales group a few months back to inquire about advertising online, the pricing was appropriate for a print model, not online. No analytics other other optimization techniques were available. Your online ads aren’t working because you aren’t selling online ads, you’re selling print ads on a website. Partner with a real online ad network and learn how to sell.

As a news site with a strong business and local focus you have great potential for monetization through a hybrid subscription, sponsorship, and advertising model. Time to go back to the drawing board.

I am willing to barter with anyone who can’t afford a subscription. You give me your product or service, completely free, deliverable any time I want it day or night, and you figure out how to get someone else to pay for it. That’s a fair swap, no?

It has been great getting information about issues on Long Island from your emails. In the bigger scheme of things all is available for free online. Not sure who is advising you, but one day soon you will be asking them for their office with the window back.

This is just becoming a sign of business, not listening to the real users.

Dear Marlene and the LIBN staff,

What is the real reason you are going in this direction? You mean to tell us that even though you are going to lose customers, you want to follow this path.
Your readers have even offered to pay for online based product with out snailmail subscription. Your readers are probably business minded people who care about the business on and of L.I. They are offering viable alternatives to get the message out, while reducing dependence on natural resources, and saving money.
From a different post that I read, the Dolan organization seems to be a bright, forward group of people.
There is alwys more than one source of information. For instance I stopped my subscription to a newspaper, because by the time the story came out in print, I already knew about it from radio/television/online (RSS feeds). So why spend my money on outdated info. By the time your weekly paper comes out, the issue is now really old news. You might as well go into righting history books, cuz that’s all you will have.
Please re-consider this decision, for the sake of us, your readers.
Thanks